Moral issues

Yes, We Still Have a Prayer

June 26, 2011June 27, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Pray for America prayer important by Quin Hillyer –
Pray. Really. Pray. Praying might just be what we need if we want this blessed country to thrive as a beacon of freedom.

It’s always a bit of a risk, and can be borderline off-putting, to intertwine prayer and politics in an overt way, or even to seem to do so. Readers or listeners rightly recoil when somebody suggests that God takes sides in politics, or that his (the person’s) own politics are more godly than that of his opponents, or (worse) that he undertook his own candidacy or cause because God “told” him to do so. That’s not what this is about. This also isn’t one of those “the-sky-is-falling” sorts of rants in which the point is that the nation is somehow on the verge of utter disaster and can be saved only by openly miraculous, divine intervention. Things aren’t great in the good’ol USA right now, but we’re not (quite) at that extremity yet.

Instead, at issue here is something more subtle. At issue is a country that has lost its way, in part because far too many millions of its individual citizens have lost their own way in their daily lives. [Read more…]

What Weiner Did Was Worse Than an Affair

June 14, 2011June 14, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Dennis Prager –

To their credit, most Democratic Party leaders have (finally) called for New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s resignation. But among liberal commentators and millions of other Americans, there is a great deal of flawed thinking about whether Weiner should resign.

The two most common arguments offered against his resigning have been that (1) what Weiner did was not illegal and (2) it was not even as bad as an extramarital affair because he never met, let alone had physical contact with, any of the women to whom he sent naked and semi-naked photos of himself.

The argument’s entirely beside the point.

The point — the whole point — is the effect of what he did on the United States House of Representatives and on the country as a whole, especially young people.

There is a simple way to prove this. Let us imagine that some congressman had walked onto the House floor in his underwear. I think it is fair to assume that just about every Democrat and Republican in the country would demand his resignation. But why? That action is not illegal, and it certainly does not constitute a form of infidelity to his wife. [Read more…]

Father John: Spiritual Mosquitoes

June 9, 2011December 17, 2020 by Orthodox Editors

are random thoughts that just seem to pop into your head without invitation by Fr. John Moses –
It is a rare saint who attends hesychasm, or internal stillness. This may be due in part to the fact that most of us don’t take prayer and meditation very seriously or we allow the busyness of life to move prayer the the edges of our daily life.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience. You’re just about to fall asleep when suddenly you hear the tiniest of sounds go by your ear. You know immediately that a mosquito has targeted you for lunch. So, you cut on the light, but no matter how much you look around, you just can’t see it. So you cut off the light, and in just a little while you hear the buzzing again. You cut the light on, but nothing. So you cut the light off and try to ignore it. You know that sometime during the night, you’ll be donating blood.

It’s the same in spiritual life. You’re trying your best to be positive, to have some sense of spiritual progress, and then the mosquitoes start buzzing in your brain. Sometimes it seems that they have sucked all of the blood from your spiritual life. These spiritual mosquitoes are called logismoi. [Read more…]

Fig Leaves and Falsehoods

June 1, 2011June 3, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Morality Right and Wrong by Janet E. Smith –
The exposé of Planned Parenthood engineered by Live Action has not only disclosed some illegal and immoral operations of Planned Parenthood, it has also revealed sharp divergences in the pro-life movement and Catholic community about what counts as lying. Pro-lifers are, of course, thrilled that more of the evildoing of Planned Parenthood has been brought before the public, leading many legislators to vote to cease government funding of the organization. But some ask: By utilizing actors posing as pimps and prostitutes and falsely claiming to employ fourteen- and fifteen-year-old sex workers who need abortions and gynecological services, did Live Action use an evil means to a good end?

The answers vary. For instance, Christopher Tollefsen wrote in the online journal Public Discourse that intentionally telling falsehoods to anyone is immoral. He holds that people faced with such challenges as protecting Jews from Nazis should resist them by means other than falsehood and volunteer to die with any Jews captured. [Read more…]

The Way or Not the Way – Orthodoxy and Why It Matters

May 27, 2011May 28, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

Jesus Christ Lord Orthodoxy by Chuck Colson –
Can we truly live out the Christian faith if we don’t understand its foundational tenets?

According to the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 57 percent of self-identified Evangelical Christians agreed with this statement: “Many religions can lead to eternal life.” Think about the staggering implications of what you just heard: 57 percent of Evangelicals believe that many religions can lead to eternal life!

Yet Jesus Himself was very clear. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Either Jesus was right, or he was wrong. What Christians, Muslims, and Jews say about the person and work of Jesus Christ can’t be reconciled. They may all be false, but they cannot all be true.

It’s called the law of non-contradiction — it goes back to Aristotle: If proposition A is true — that is, if it conforms to reality — then proposition B, making a contrary claim, cannot be true as well.

If nearly six out of ten Evangelicals don’t believe the most basic tenets of the faith, it’s no wonder the Church is losing its influence over the culture. Because what we believe affects how we live. [Read more…]

Blasphemy: Pastor Uses Parable of the Sower to Encourage Abortion

May 22, 2011May 24, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Jennifer Hartline
Anyone unwilling to defend human life from the moment of conception has no pro-life theology. Rev. Matthew Westfox is stunningly deceived. His “reproductive choice” theology is not remotely pro-life. He is a mouthpiece for the culture of death.

After I finished reading Rev. Matthew Westfox’s article entitled, “Resurrecting Pro-Life”, I couldn’t shake an image in my head of the father of lies smugly patting himself on the back for this one. A very delicious deception, indeed.

Rev. Westfox begins, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” reminds me that Easter is a celebration of life itself and what Christians honor and revere about life. Easter reminds me of the respect and reverence for life that is at the core of my theology, that I am in my heart a deeply “pro-life” person.”

That first paragraph left me with a vague uneasiness in my stomach, and the next paragraph got worse. A lot worse. [Read more…]

The Courage to Refuse to Cooperate in Evil

May 15, 2011May 16, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

by Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. –
Modern health care is replete with situations that tempt us to cooperate immorally in evil.

An electrician by trade, Tim Roach is married with two children and lives about an hour outside Minneapolis. He was laid off his job in July 2009. After looking for work for more than a year and a half, he got a call from his local union in February 2011 with the news anyone who is unemployed longs for, not just a job offer, but one with responsibility and a good salary of almost $70,000 a year. He ultimately turned the offer down, however, because he discovered that he was being asked to oversee the electrical work at a new Planned Parenthood facility under construction in St. Paul on University Avenue. Aware that abortions would be performed there, he knew his work would involve him in “cooperation with evil,” and he courageously declined the offer.

Significant moral issues can arise if we knowingly cooperate in another’s evil actions, even though we don’t perform those evil actions ourselves. [Read more…]

Gay Activists Bullying the Boy Scouts

May 9, 2011January 23, 2020 by Orthodox Editors

by Chuck Colson –
I’ve been warning you that the current push to legitimize homosexual conduct and so-called gay “marriage” represents today’s greatest threat to religious liberty. I’ve told you about attacks against iPhone apps for the Manhattan Declaration and Exodus International, as well as a boycott of Chick-fil-a.

Their crime? Supporting marriage as only between a man and a woman and having the temerity to not support so-called gay “marriage.”

The Boy Scouts’ politically incorrect stands on homosexuality and atheism have long put this great organization in the extremists’ cross-hairs, and now the pressure is getting even more intense.

The Scouts prohibit open homosexuals from serving as leaders. That’s because the organization believes that “homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed.” [Read more…]

God: The Central Question of Worldview

May 6, 2011May 7, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

God Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit by Tom Gilson

Of all the issues affecting every person’s picture of reality, nothing is more fundamental than questions about God. Is there one God, Creator and Sovereign of all? Could there be more than one god? Or no God at all? If there is a God (or gods), then what is that God (or gods) like? Nothing determines your worldview—and the course of your life—more than how you answer those questions.

And yet some atheists like to make light of the God question. Richard Dawkins brushed it aside this way in The God Delusion:

I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon-Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.

I like to call that the arithmetical atheism argument. Its force (such as it is) depends on the idea that in counting gods, as in counting inches on a ruler, the distance between one and zero is no different than the distance between two and one. [Read more…]

The Danger in Severing God from America’s Identity

May 1, 2011May 2, 2011 by Orthodox Editors

America In God We Trust by William Sullivan –
It is beyond dispute that there is a link between socialism and American progressivism. Both flawed ideologies are predicated upon the soundness of a large and powerful government designed to disperse the fruits of labor by seizing means and property from the productive. And as many conservatives are quick to point out, nothing could be more antithetical to the ideals scribed in the Constitution

But beyond the insidious application of socialism under the less condemning titles of “progressivism” and “social justice,” the liberal left poses another threat to America that is less defended. It has, for over a century, laid perpetual siege upon Christianity, seeking to excise all Christian influence from American government and its institutions piecemeal, from banning prayer in schools to seeking taxpayer-funded abortions. [Read more…]